Tag: maldives

Libyan army guns down demonstrators, UK backs away from Bahrain

Soldiers in Libya and Bahrain have fired on demonstrators as authorities try to quell growing unrest, triggered after protesters toppled 30 year autocrats in Tunisia and Egypt.

Troops in Libya reportedly shot and killed at least 12 mourners in the city of Benghazi, after a group tried to storm a military barracks and throw firebombs into the compound on the way to the funeral. Opposition groups claimed up to 60 were killed, while one activist told the BBC that the regime was releasing prisoners from jail to attack the demonstrators.

The BBC reported that troops used mortars and 14.5mm heavy machine guns to repress the civilians, while Al-Jazeera reported that hospitals were running out of blood needed for emergency transfusions.

Al-Jazeera also reported an account from a cleric in Benghazi, who witnessed a tank crushing two people in a car. Libyan President Muammar Abu Minyar al-Gaddafi has also imposed a news blackout on the country and banned journalists from entering.

Analysts have further suggested that the human cost of an Egyptian-style uprising in Libya could be far higher, given the military apparent enthusiasm for firing on its own population.

Bahrain’s military meanwhile shot and killed at least one demonstrator and wounded 50 more, during a funeral procession for four people killed in earlier unrest.

Rising tensions and ongoing demonstrations suggest that King Hamad bin Issa al-Khalifa’s gift of US$3000 on February 12 to every family in the poverty-stricken Gulf nation has failed to satisfy protesters.

The UK, which has previously supported regimes in Bahrain and Libya, announced it was withdrawing licenses authorising the sale on arms to both countries.

The UK’s Ministry of Defence has trained more than 100 Bahraini army officers in the past five years at its military college in Sandhurst, reports the UK’s Guardian newspaper, while the country is also a base for the US fifth fleet.

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay has meanwhile condemned the shooting of protesters in Algeria, Bahrain, Iran, Iraq, Libya and Yemen, and described the entire region as “boiling with anger.”

“At the root of this anger is decades of neglect of people’s aspirations to realise not only civil and political rights, but also economic, social and cultural rights,” Navi said.

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Employ recovering addicts, President urges big business

State-owned corporations and large businesses should help rehabilitate drug addicts back into society through active recruitment, President Mohamed Nasheed has said during his weekly radio address.

The President noted the state-owned construction firm Works Corporation Limited had employed 15 recovering addicts in its Thilafushi precast yard, and that 11 of the 15 had successfully completed the program. The company had now taken on an additional 25 young people to boost the government’s drug rehabilitation efforts, he said.

Addicts, he said, were isolated from their families and society as a result of their addiction, and such programs could return them to the community.

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No injuries reported in Male’ cemetery fire

No injuries have been recorded following a fire that damaged equipment and a cemetery building yesterday in Machangoalhi, Male’, local new reports have said.

Police authorities have confirmed that the blaze struck a second floor block used as staff accommodation at the “Aaa Sahara” cemetery, according to Haveeru.

The Maldives National Defence Force’s (MNDF) Fire and Rescue department dealt with the blaze, whilst police are now investigating the possible causes of the fire, the report added.

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Somali piracy spreading to Asian waters, says US military official

A high ranking US Military official has claimed that piracy originating from Somalia is expanding into Asia, potentially leading to “problems” for a nation like the Maldives, according to news reports.

Miadhu reported that Admiral Robert Willard, who has recently toured the Maldives in his role as commander of the 300,000 strong Pacific Command, claimed President Mohamed Nasheed had expressed concerns that pirates whether abandoned or lost during, had been landing in the Maldives.

Several dinghies containing Somali nationals were stranded in the Maldives last year. Defence personnel discovered a bullet casing in one of the later dinghies.

A recent Minivan News investigation found that although there was no evidence that national interests in the Maldives had been threatened so far by piracy, coastal security authorities and experts believed the country could potentially become a target for pirate vessels increasingly forced away from African waters by the naval presence in the Gulf of Aden.

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LDCs meeting in Delhi this weekend

The government of India is holding a ministerial conference for Least Developed Countries (LDCs) this weekend.

The Maldives will be represented by State Minister of Foreign Affairs, Ahmed Naseem, despite graduating to a Middle Income Country in January.

The number of LDC’s has increased from 25 in 1971 to 48 in 2011, noted the Indian High Commission to the Maldives in a press statement. All countries are expected to be sending their permanent representatives, while 35 ministers are attending the conference in Delhi.

“Sustained global growth and stability will remain a dream if economies of the LDCs continue to be underdeveloped and their natural and human resources remain untapped preventing their overall socio-economic advancement,” the High Commission statement noted.

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Mid-market appeal amongst 2011 tourism challenges

As a growing number of Asian markets like India begin flocking to the Maldives for their holiday escapes, the country’s tourism minister believes the government’s goal of providing more middle-market beds to “compliment” premium resort properties will boost the industry in the long run.

As the country continues to look at potential revamps for how it markets itself in the tourism market, Dr Mariyam Zulfa, Minister for Tourism, Arts and Culture, told Minivan News that the Maldives risked being seen as a destination with “too many” premium beds.

However, Zulfa said that in looking to diversify towards more mid-market tourism, the issue of replacing the country’s current “Sunny Side of Life” ad slogan remained under industry consultation – including over whether it should be changed at all.

Zulfa’s comments were made as new findings published by the Pacific Asia Travel Association (PATA) and the Nielsen Company found the Maldives was among several destinations like China, Indonesia and Bangladesh to be attracting increasing interest from Indian travellers.

“The diversification in destinations indicates a greater sense of adventurism and discovery that should be heartening for tourism as a whole, and a clear symptom of a confident Indian consumer mimicking their country’s confidence and prominence,” Neilson Company Executive Director Surekha Poddar stated in the report.

“The Indian traveller is set to become a prized possession as potential spending power and disposition to travel to new countries increases.”

Zulfa said that with income levels in nations like China and India growing in general on a daily basis, the Maldives was beginning to see “exponential growth” in the number of visitors from both of these markets.

“The government has introduced a mid-market policy focusing on three to four star resorts,” she said. “These are being introduced to complement the premium beds we have here.”

Although not willing to speculate if these tourism developments were directly related, Zulfa said that more middle market properties was seen as a move that would be cater to a changing customer demographic.

“Premium beds alone are not suitable for visitors from the South of Asia. We need to look at how to reach out to them,” she said. “These tourists have very different vacation habits to more established markets like Europe.”

Slogan talks

Zulfa claimed that opinion was currently divided on the direction to take on marketing the Maldives to travellers around the world, particularly the merits of changing “the sunny side of life” slogan – one that has been in service for eleven years.

“We will be having informal discussions whilst we will be at the Internationale Tourismus Börse (ITB) – a tourism trade show being held between March 9-13 in Berlin,” she said. “Right now, we have two levels of feedback, one of which is that it [still] works.”

Zulfa added that if a decision was taken to keep the slogan, it would perhaps need to be reintegrated or redesigned with a “more modern” aesthetic.

“There is another reasoning that suggests that although the wording is OK, it is too general,” she said. “The slogan is now 11 years old and perhaps to fill the premium beds we have, a new slogan may be needed to reinvigorate the market. This will be discussed during consultations at the ITB.”

Zulfa said that work was nonetheless continuing on a Maldivian marketing strategy despite uncertainty on the final product.

Mohamed ‘Sim’ Ibrahim, Secretary General of the Maldives Association of Tourism Industry (MATI), said that MATI did not itself have an opinion on the final outcome of any possible slogan revamp. However, Ibrahim said that MATI hoped to see greater study and research into what the industry itself would prefer to see in terms of branding and marketing.

“We don’t think enough is being done, [in terms of studying the slogan issue],” he said. “We would like to see more cooperation from resorts, airlines, travel companies and other major stakeholders in the Maldives tourism industry.”

From the outset, 2011 is proving to be a year of change for Maldivian tourism, with the implementation of Tourism Goods and Services Tax (GST) on January 1 that placed an additional charge of 3.5 percent on a host of services supplied by the travel industry.

Mohamed said that although he believed that adoption of the GST among service operators had gone “smoothly”, MATI held “serious issues” with the tax related to payments and other technical issues.

The MATI secretary general said he was unable to provide more details about the concerns at present, but added that the association was looking to hold a meeting with resort chains over the issues.

Zulfa claimed that the implementation of the GST had so far gone well for the industry, with no major complaints received concerning the charges.

“Most operators in the tourism industry agree that the 3.5 percent GST is a very reasonable amount to pay,” she said.

“This is a way that more people can equitably benefit from tourism.”

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Comment: National University could become the engine of national growth and prosperity

One of the most promising aspects for the proponents of democratic change in the Middle East is that the ongoing Arab revolutions are largely being led by youth activists.

Unlike the stereotyped bearded conservatives and liberal communists, the current reform movements in the Arab nations have been fuelled and sustained by the region’s sizeable youth population; a study by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life reveals that 60 percent of the Middle East’s population is under the age of 30.

With a median age of just under 25 years, the Maldives also has a very young population that peaked right around the time the country achieved democracy.

Political scientists often tout these statistics as positive indications of a brighter future in these countries.

For a society to be stable, however, they contend that it is necessary to keep this young energy directed and focused on the onerous task of nation building.

One of the long awaited measures towards this end was achieved on the morning of February 15, 2011, when the Maldivian President inaugurated the country’s first National University.

In a country where the educational levels are abysmally low – only one out of five senior secondary students go on to pursue higher education – this comes as welcome news that could aim to reverse that dismal trend.

Traditionally, however, universities have been more than just institutions of learning.

In countries like Turkey, Egypt and Iran, universities have also been centres of intellectual and political activism and indeed, factories of social change.

Student unions in Eastern Europe were the focal points around which the various colour revolutions would coalesce and result in the fall of deep rooted communist regimes.

Universities have also been a hotbed of political activism in Iran, where student bodies participated in the ‘Islamic Revolution’ that dethroned the Shah and installed the Ayatollah in power. Decades later, it was once again university students that would form the core of the ‘Green Movement’, which has in recent years taken to the streets demanding democratic reform.

In the United States, a country with one of the most deeply entrenched university cultures, there has been an interesting historical trend of political ideology and beliefs on university campuses exhibiting marked departures from mainstream public views. Thus, universities have been the flashpoints of major anti-war rallies and liberal activism.

At various points of history, governments have tried to exercise control over universities and dictate the course of their youthful idealism.

One famous example is that of Nazi Germany, where the state apparatus removed books by Jewish authors, communists and other critics from the universities libraries, and burnt them in public squares.

Intellectuals, including the celebrated scientist Albert Einstein, were expelled from universities under German Law, and the Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels famously proclaimed in 1933, “Jewish intellectualism is dead”.

However, history records that Einstein would move to the United States, publish over 300 scientific papers, and spur the top secret Manhattan Project that would soon make America the world’s first nuclear nation.

A little over a decade after Goebbels’ proclamation, the book burning Nazi Germany would face an ignominious defeat, and Einstein’s adopted home would reign for decades as the world’s leading scientific, economic and political superpower.

The temptation to assert ideological control over universities has also seen unpleasant consequences in other countries like Egypt and China.

It is heartening, therefore, to see even conservative politicians like former State Minister of Islamic Affairs, Mohamed Shaheem Ali Saeed, propose that the Maldives National University should offer courses in comparative religious studies and theology – ie, study of religions other than Islam.

The traditionally isolated Maldivian has at many points struggled to deal with foreign ideas, often resulting in potentially xenophobic tendencies.

In November 2008, owners of a local water bottling plant were forced to issue a statement following controversy over the discovery of a ‘cross shape’ on the caps of the water bottles. The culprit turned out to be a faulty machine part that could not be repaired locally. Nevertheless, the company had to sand-paper the offending shape into something less controversial.

In September 2010, an Indian teacher in Foakaidhoo, Shaviyani Atoll, was reportedly tied up and forced off an island after “devout Muslim” parents mistook a compass design drawn on a blackboard for a crucifix.

Courses like Comparative Religious studies could indeed introduce diversity of thought and foster greater mainstream public enlightenment about other belief systems and cultures, which in turn would undoubtedly have a lasting effect on broader concepts of social tolerance.

One must also note the role of universities in revolutionising technology and lifestyles.

From ground breaking medical research to increasing our understanding of life and the cosmos, the thousands of academic papers published annually in leading universities have made invaluable contributions.

Innovative multi-billion dollar corporations like Google, Yahoo and Sun Microsystems have emerged from the laboratories of Stanford University, while Columbia University alone has produced nearly a hundred Nobel Laureates.

Dozens of world leaders from Margaret Thatcher to Indira Gandhi, have emerged from Oxford University, whereas Cambridge University has given the world Isaac Newton, Neils Bohr and Stephen Hawking. The first computer was invented within its walls, as was the revolutionary double helical model of DNA.

Student athletes trained in University gymnasiums have racked up scores of Olympic sports medals, whereas some of the biggest bands in the music industry have at some point shared dorm rooms while living on campus.

In every field of progress, universities and academics have traditionally been a few steps ahead of mainstream society and making giant strides into the future.

Some might be sceptical that a university in the Maldives, without the luxury of a self-contained campus or an atmosphere of academic seclusion, or even a sizeable student or faculty body can quite leave a comparable footprint on the national intellect or society, as is visible in so many other countries.

During the inauguration, however, the Maldivian President recognised the role of universities in upholding democracy and freedom of expression, and the Chancellor of the newly instituted University, former Education Minister Dr Musthafa Luthfy has promised to follow in the illustrious traditions of Oxford.

As Chancellor, he has the monumental task of directing the youth’s energy into strong intellectual and academic pursuits and to nurture a conducive, stimulating environment in which such pursuits can be undertaken without undue political control and societal intimidation – with full intellectual freedom of thought and expression; an atmosphere of research, curiosity, questioning and free inquiry that are crucial to keep the flames of intellectualism burning bright.

As a country that has only recently tasted democratic freedoms, the Maldives counts on its first National University to produce the future leadership and become engine of national growth and prosperity, while simultaneously charting the country’s destiny.

All comment pieces are the sole view of the author and do not reflect the editorial policy of Minivan News. If you would like to write an opinion piece, please send proposals to [email protected]

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EC calls for final council seat re-vote in five islands

A second round of voting will take place for the fifth and final seat on five island councils after an equal number of votes were received for some candidates, though no other ballots from this month’s local elections will be re-contested without a court ruling, the Elections Commission (EC) has said.

EC Vice President Ahmed Hassan Fayaz confirmed that registered constituents would be able to return to polling stations in Baa atoll Kihaadhoo, Raa atoll Dhuvaafaru, Gaaf Alif atoll Kolamaafushi, Haa Dhaal atoll Kumundhoo, and Meemu atoll Veyvah to reselect a fifth respective council candidate on 12 March 2011.

Fayaz claimed that every island taking part in this month’s elections was required to pick five candidates to sit on their respective councils. However, he added that recounts were required in five of these constituencies solely between the fifth and sixth placed candidates who received an equal number of votes.

“Effectively they were tied within these constituencies, so according to the law, the fifth and sixth placed candidates will have to be voted on again,” he said.

The ruling Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP) had previously alleged that voting was unfairly conducted by the EC in terms of favouring certain political parties and called on recounts of a second round of voting in some constituencies.

The constituencies included Haa Alifu Atoll Kela, Raa Atoll Ungoofaaru, Noonu Atoll Miladhoo, Manadhoo, Laamu Atoll Gan and Maabidhoo.”

However, Fayaz told Minivan News today that there would not be any additional voting for this month’s local council elections conducted without a court ruling.

The comments came after the High Court of the Maldives issued an injunction on the announcement of official results of Haa Alifu Atoll Kela ballot box number A05.06.01. The injunction was made after the filing of a case alleging that the EC had violated the Elections Act and the Elections Commission Act.

The High Court said that if the official results of the H.A Kela Atoll and Island Council were announced, it could violate the rights of several citizens and requested the announcement of ballots be delayed until ordered otherwise. The High Court did not reveal who filed the case in the court.

Major disruption to voting occurred on the island of approximately 2200 people, when clashes between islanders, police and election officials forced authorities to evacuate the ballot box to Hanimadhoo.

The EC has said it will respect the High Court ruling and any others made in the future.

Despite its criticism of the elections process, the MDP released a statement claiming it had calculated the popular vote in the local council elections as 44 percent MDP, 40 percent DRP, based on current available data.

The popular vote reflects the overall political preference of voters, and has not yet been released by the Elections Commission (EC). The MDP said it produced the figures based on data published by the EC on its website at the time.

Both parties declared victory and were celebrating last week after the Dhivehi Rayyithunge Party (DRP) won a decisive seat majority in the local council elections, while the MDP won control of major population hubs.

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Lale English teacher resorted to begging, sleeping in fishmarket

When English teacher John Campbell accepted a job at Lale Youth International School two years ago, he had no idea he would be leaving the country with scarcely more than the shirt on his back and an expatriate horror story far removed from the picturesque experience of a resort worker.

At one stage in December 2010, penniless, starving, robbed, waiting for the school to pay his remaining salary and unable to get a response from any authorities, he was forced to sleep in the capital’s fish market for seven nights before being rescued by an immigration official.

At night, Campbell would sit in the doorways of shops and read by the light through the windows. Famished, he eventually resorted to begging outside Indira Gandhi Memorial Hospital (IGMH).

“It was my first experience of begging,” says the Australian national, who has 10 years experience as an English teacher and a wife who currently lives in Thailand.

“I hadn’t eaten for six days, but people gave me enough for a coffee. The humiliation was better than starving, but it was not something I want to repeat.”

He was eventually found by an immigration official and taken to the immigration lock-up, where he was fed and allowed to come and go as he pleased. Later, he was moved to another building that was being refurbished –

“I don’t think it was official,” he says, praising the department worker for the help he received.

Campbell says his problems began when the Turkish-run international school failed to pay him one month’s salary on completion of his contract. He claimed that the school also required foreign staff to initially pay a US$1200 “passport deposit”.

“The school didn’t want to pay the end of my contract. I had a flight on November 16, 2010, and they made an offer of US$300 but only if I signed a statement agreeing to make no further claims against the school.”

It was common practice, Campbell said, to give departing teachers a cheque in rufiya shortly before their departure, knowing they would be unable to change the money – and then offer a significantly lower amount of dollars.

Unlike other teachers Minivan News spoke to, Campbell took the cheque, “but the bank would not change the money.”

He left the country and flew to Thailand to visit his wife, and attempted to change the cheque there. Banks were uninterested and the best “unofficial” rate he could get was Rf 40 to the dollar – more than three times the pegged rate of Rf 12.85. He changed enough to survive, and returned to the Maldives to pursue his remaining salary.

Prior to leaving he had sought to press his case with assorted authorities in Male’, particularly the Education Ministry and the Labour Department.

“Five emails to the Labour Ministry and two handwritten letters delivered personally, but they refused to acknowledge that any letters had been received,” he said. “I even tried writing letters to the President’s Office.”

Unable to penetrate the Maldives byzantine bureaucracy and without the contacts to do so, Campbell met a Maldivian man who agreed to help him in exchange for Rf 500 a week. When Campbell visited Thailand on conclusion of his contract, the man also arranged for the storage of his possessions.

When he returned to continue pressing his case, “I discovered that he had taken everything I had. My clothes, shoes, paperwork, sound system, surfboard, tools, materials, fittings – everything I owned apart from my boat.”

The small hand-made sailing vessel was Campbell’s hobby during his spare time in the Maldives, and was made from 90 percent recycled materials.

“I’ve been boat building since I was a little kid, I built the first when I was 11 years old – the first that was big enough to use. In high school, I would buy boats that had been written off and restore them to resell. Then I started making surfboards – it was good money.”

His aim was go on weekend sailing trips to local surf spots – although he adds that the real enjoyment was the relaxing focus of constructing it.

“I had finished it the day before I left [to Thailand]. I left it on the shore near the Hulhumale’ ferry terminal, after towing it up the beach and tying it up. Two weeks later, I found it a few hundred metres from the ferry terminal, smashed to pieces on the rocks and stripped of all steel fittings.”

After his possessions were stolen Campbell went to police and gave the name, home address and two telephone numbers of the man he claimed had taken everything he owned. Nothing happened – “at least 20 people told me they’ve seen him around Hulhumale’.”

“It felt like I was seen as an acceptable target. I lost everything – for the first 14 days all I had was a ticket back to Australia.”

Unwilling to give up on his possessions or the money owed him by the school, Campbell sought a refund for the ticket from the Malaysian airlines office.

That money lasted two weeks, “and then I had nowhere to sleep, no support, and nothing happening [with my case].”

Unwilling to exploit the hospitality of his hosts at a local guest house without being able to pay them back, he moved onto the streets.

“I had no money left to pay for the hotel, and while they would have let me stay I didn’t want to rack up a debt I couldn’t pay,” he said.

Lale Youth International was not responding to calls when Minivan News called to corroborate Campbell’s story, and Biz Atoll, the Maldivian company that holds the agreement to run the school in conjunction with the Turkish group, requested Minivan News to call back later and then did not answer the phone.

However, a source familiar with the school and its employment of foreign staff told Minivan News that the Campbell’s treatment was not unusual.

“In one year, the contract was changed 2-3 times. The school was supposed to pay one month’s salary after completion of one year, but it seems they were not willing to do that,” the source said.

“They did it to a Sri Lankan boy who worked there – he begged for his salary in dollars, before leaving to Sri Lanka, and they made him buy it from them at a rate of Rf 14. He paid because he had to.”

Campbell, the source attested, “was a very good teacher” – and one of the last native-English speakers to leave the school.

“There were problems in the contract that worked to the advantage of the school,” Campbell says, “such as clauses that said in the event of any contention between staff and the employer, the employer’s opinion counted. Anyone who could read English would understand the contract was untenable.”

Campbell’s sister eventually paid for his flight out of the country.

“Why not the thief’s family?” he told Minivan News, from Thailand. “It seems I’ve made a large donation to the Maldives economy. I had to make a citizens arrest of the thief because the Hulhumale’ police couldn’t find him after six weeks of looking. I had to re-seize my property by myself because they were too busy at 6:00am in the morning to accompany me. I retrieved about 25 percent of it, but not the money stolen as well. Afterwards they were very keen to get me out of the country.”

“All the difficulties were created by the school’s refusal to pay on time, and having to stay and fight them then return and fight again, with no one holding them accountable – Maldives government departments are the worst case of ‘jobs for the boys’. It cost me more than anything, and I’m left in debt after two years.”

Minivan News reported on Lale Youth International School in May last year, after the Human Rights Commission of the Maldives (HRCM) launched an investigation into claims children were being abused.

Later that year, the Criminal Court found the former principal, Turkish national Serkan Akar, guilty of assaulting children and sentenced him to pay a Rf200 (US$14) fine.

Serkan had denied the charges against him, which included strangling and whipping a child with a belt.

After the sentencing and the release of the HRCM report, the government briefly discussed repossessing the school from the Turkish consortium.

Former Education Minister Mustafa Luthfy told Minivan News that the government eventually decided “to continue with the Turkish group, following certain amendments to the agreement and proposed changes. They brought in some changes, but they still need to do more.”
Addendum: Following publication of this article, Principal of Lale Youth International School Mehmet Akif sent Minivan News a letter in which he claimed that the school had fulfilled its contractual obligations to John Campbell. The letter has been published in accordance with the school’s right-of-reply.
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